Sercos releases CIP Safety on Sercos Conformance Test Tool

December 2, 2013 - Sercos International announced a conformance test tool for CIP Safety on Sercos devices. This testing tool can be applied for originator and target implementations, no matter whether the safety functionality is part of a Sercos master or slave device. The test tool offers the possibility to automatically test the full CIP Safety on Sercos protocol functionality of a device in order to prove the compliance with The CIP Safety specification. The identical test software can also be used to test implementations of CIP Safety on EtherNet/IP and DeviceNet.

“With the availability of a vendor-independent conformance test tool for CIP Safety on Sercos devices in conjunction with a well-defined certification process between TÜV, ODVA and Sercos International, manufacturers can minimize the efforts and costs to implement and certify a CIP Safety on Sercos device”, states Peter Lutz, managing director of Sercos International.

Vendors seeking to perform own tests and prepare for the CIP Safety conformance test will be able to purchase the Conformance Test Tool for CIP Safety. This test tool is identical to the official conformance test system used by ODVA’s Test Service Providers (TSP) to determine compliance with The CIP Safety Specification.

The CIP Safety on Sercos conformance tests are currently available at ODVA’s Test Service Provider (TSP) in Ann Arbor, North America. First CIP Safety on Sercos devices have already been successfully certified.

About Sercos International
Sercos International is an association of users and manufacturers that is in charge of technical development, standardization, certification and marketing for the Sercos automation bus. Conformance tests ensure that using Sercos is standard compliant and also ensures that devices from different manufacturers can be combined. Based in Germany, the organization presently has more than 80 member companies located around the world and has national liaison offices in North America and Asia.

About Sercos
The SErial Realtime COmmunication System, or Sercos, is one of the world’s leading digital interfaces for communication between controls, drives, and decentralized peripheral devices. Sercos has been used in machine engineering for more than 20 years and is implemented in over 4 million real-time nodes. With its open, manufacturer-independent Ethernet-based architecture, Sercos III is a universal bus for all automation solutions.